June 2, 2014

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this informative new Wall Street Journal article headlined "Lethal-Injection Drug Is Scrutinized: Midazolam, Used in Botched Oklahoma Execution, Tied to Two Other Cases Seen as Troubling." Here are excerpts:

Anesthesiologists say midazolam works like a dream. A few milligrams of the sedative calms patients' preoperative anxiety, while leaving them alert enough to talk with doctors and nurses before the more potent drugs kick in.

Reviews of its newer role as part of states' lethal-injection protocols aren't as unanimous. The drug, made by several companies in the U.S., has come into the spotlight with April's high-profile botched execution in Oklahoma, the first in that state to use midazolam. State officials injected Clayton Lockett, convicted of kidnapping and murdering a 19-year-old woman, with 100 milligrams of midazolam to render him unconscious. They then injected another drug to paralyze him and a third to stop his heart....

The drug has been used in nine executions since last fall, and lethal-injection experts have voiced concerns about three of those—the Oklahoma case, one in Florida and another in Ohio.

In the past, executioners would typically use thiopental and pentobarbital, which belong to a class of drugs known as barbiturates. Anesthesiologists say thiopental, which has largely been phased out of use, was aimed mostly at preventing a patient from feeling stimuli that would typically be painful. Pentobarbital is still used, they say, mostly to induce comas.

The makers of thiopental and pentobarbital, worried about the drugs being associated with capital punishment, cut back their availability for executions, leading some states to turn to midazolam. It belongs to a drug class known as benzodiazepines, which anesthesiologists say are most often used to sedate or calm patients, not anesthetize them. Anesthesiologists say they typically administer midazolam to a patient only a few milligrams at a time and therefore know little about the effects of much larger doses, like those given in lethal-injection protocols.

There is little agreement about how much to use in executions. Florida uses 500 milligrams, while Oklahoma used 100 milligrams on Mr. Lockett. Ohio used only 10 milligrams of midazolam in a January execution, but in April announced that it would change to 50 milligrams. None of the three states would comment on why they chose midazolam or how they settled on dosages.

"It's uncharted territory," said David Waisel, an anesthesiologist at Boston Children's Hospital who has testified on behalf of death-row inmates. "States literally have no idea what they're doing to these people." Dr. Waisel and others say that even when administered properly and at high doses, it is unclear whether midazolam sufficiently anesthetizes the sensations caused by the other drugs often used alongside it, such as vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant that causes paralysis, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Both of those drugs were used on Mr. Lockett.